Thursday, August 21, 2008

press release for my new book

Children’s book takes technology on a new adventure

Glen Burnie, MD August 19, 2008

Meredith Mammano, a new children’s’ book author, has written The Electronic Adventures of Diga Byte: Wrong Turn, a fun play on words bringing many facets of the computer world to life. The story is of a good natured worm living in a family’s computer. Diga Byte rides a train named the Internet Express all over the World Wide Web in search of knowledge and fun. The book is an amusing twist of gadget technologies when Diga Byte takes a wrong turn while searching for a meal, and ends up being downloaded into the family’s digital camera via the USB Bus. He inches along all the photos of the family’s vacation learning all about the interesting spots, until he is uploaded back in to his computer. He, then, gets directions from the Central Processor ending up at the Garden Page, which was his original destination, where he snacks on a pumpkin.

The book’s reading level is intended for ages 4 through 9 but will appeal to older children and adults as well. While adults, especially those in the Information Technology field may at first have concerns about this idea, since typically a worm is a computer virus that can cause major damage to the system, will find this an appealing twist. The author even states in her introduction “Typically any type of worm in a computer is very bad, but in this case, as it turns out, this is the first ever good worm.” To further entice technical savvy children Diga Byte also takes a little something from each page back to the station to store in his Page Collection and he then adds the web page to his list of favorites.

Children today, are just as or often even more familiar with technology than adults and this book is intended to appeal to that aspect of their daily lives in a way that is fun and educational. Since, school children are taught to operate a computer beginning in kindergarten; many even having their own at home, this book is a fun parody on the components of those lessons.

Meredith Mammano is a stay at home mom turned published author earlier this year. The Electronic Adventures of Diga Byte: Wrong Turn is the 1st book in her series. Her husband who works in the IT field helped her with many of the technical aspects of the book. The illustrations where done by her father who is a retired communications specialist from IBM. Mrs. Mammano is now spending her time promoting and marketing the book at local libraries, daycare facilities and bookstores to share Diga Byte’s adventures with young people and to excite them about reading and computers. She is preparing for and envisioning a collection of future books in this series. She is living in Maryland with her husband and 2 children.

The book, ISBN: 978-1-4343-9636-5 was published through Authorhouse and is available for purchase at the publisher’s online bookstore at www.authorhouse.com . It is also available where all books are sold and at various online booksellers.